Having all of your ducks in a row, whatever that means, is a great state to be in. But it’s usually a luxury few of us can afford. The rest of us are just trying to figure out how you get ducks to walk forwards.

This weekend I built a trellis for our climbing vine. Mostly. Christie had brought home materials already, so there were my limitations. What kind of trellis could I make with these materials.

I found a bit of ‘pinspiration’ and decided on a chevron patterened Trellis. Von Bieker Manor is fond of chevron patterns. But they are complicated.

The wood we had was gnarly. Twisted. The glue we had dried slow. Patience.

I didn’t start with a clear plan. I started with a vision. Where I hoped to get when this was over. Then I started building.

Along the way things broke. I glued, and then I hammered and the glue popped free. I screwed and split wood. I tried to stand it up in the dirt and the entire top fell off. Onto me. Thankfully it was light, cheap wood.

This morning the trellis is still not finished. But it almost is. And I can now see that finishing is possible. I can see how I’m going to get there.

If you’re working on any kind of project that is stretching your abilities and no-how, I’m sure you’ve made the metaphoric connections already.

Bleeding Heart Art Space is now a space. I can invite people to the Gallery. It’s pretty great. But there is a lot we don’t know.

We still need more volunteers. We still need a steady source of funding. We still need to cross t’s and dot i’s. All of this was overwhelming when we began.

No. It was downright paralyzing.

But somehow, we just got started. And it’s still not finished, but we have something. We’re here, and we don’t plan on leaving any time soon.

Each time something falls apart, we learn. We grow. We do better. We find help we never knew existed.

Sometimes the solutions don’t arrive until needed. Until we’re ready.

Friday I had excellent meetings. A meeting with Brandon who is a local coworking space manager. Chris from Visual Arts Alberta who is more than willing to help us set up some administrative details for the space.

When we all sat in my living room a few years back and wrote everything we could think of that would need to be done, we didn’t know that Brandon and Chris were out there. We didn’t know so much about the help we would receive, and the people that would come out of the woodwork to help us.

So, if you have something to build, go ahead and plan. Plans are good. They get you going.

But I’d bet the world is full of long forgotten excellent, unexectued plans.